To reward Spithridates for this important service, in a manner which would strengthen the Greek interest in Asia, Agesilaus, with great address, negotiated a match between Cotys and the daughter of Spithridates, so as to lead each party to consider himself as under obligations to the other, and both to look upon him as their benefactor. As the season was too far advanced for a journey by land across the Paphlagonian mountains, the young lady was sent by sea, under the charge of a Spartan officer, to the dominions of her intended consort; and Agesilaus returned to take up his winter quarters in the territories of Pharnabazus, and in the satrap’s own residence of Dascylium. Here were parks, chases, and forests abounding in game of every kind, and round about were many large villages plentifully stocked with provisions for the ordinary supply of the princely household. The domain was skirted by the windings of a river, full of various kinds of fish. Here therefore the Greek army passed the winter in ease and plenty, making excursions, as occasion invited, into the surrounding country far and wide, while Pharnabazus was forced to range over it as a houseless fugitive, carrying with him his family and his treasures, for which he could find no place of permanent shelter, and, even in this Scythian mode of life, never free from apprehensions for his personal safety.
Sometimes, however, he hovered in the neighbourhood of the Greeks, and once surprised them in one of their marauding excursions; and though he had with him only two scythe-chariots, and about four hundred cavalry, he dispersed a body of seven hundred Greek horse with his chariots, and drove them, with the loss of one hundred men, to seek shelter from their heavy infantry. A few days after this skirmish Spithridates learned that the satrap was encamped in the village of Cava, about twenty miles off, and communicated the discovery to Herippidas. Herippidas, who loved a brilliant enterprise, was immediately fired with the hope of making himself master of the satrap’s camp and person, and requested Agesilaus to grant him, for this purpose, two thousand heavy infantry, as many targeteers, the Paphlagonian cavalry, and those of Spithridates, and as many of the Greek horse as might be willing to take part in the adventure. He obtained all he asked; but at night, at the hour of departure, he found that not half of his volunteers appeared at the appointed place. Nevertheless, fearing the raillery of his colleagues, if he should desist, he persevered in his undertaking, and after marching all night, arrived at daybreak at the encampment of Pharnabazus. He overpowered a body of Mysians at the outpost; but their resistance afforded time for the escape of Pharnabazus and his family, who however left the camp, with a great treasure of drinking vessels and costly furniture, in the possession of the assailants. But Herippidas, being anxious, for the sake of his own honour, to deliver the whole booty into the hands of the officers who in the Spartan army answered to the Roman quæstors, took precautions to exclude his allies from all share in it; and he thus deprived the Spartan arms of an advantage much more important than the value of the spoil. For Spithridates and the Paphlagonians, indignant at this treatment, deserted the camp the next night, and repairing to Sardis entered the service of Ariæus, who had again revolted, and was at war with the king: Agesilaus was more deeply affected by this loss than by any mischance that he met with in the course of his expedition: and he seems to have regretted it still more on private than on public grounds.
Not long after, a prospect seemed to be opened to him of gaining a much more valuable ally. A Greek of Cyzicus, who was connected by ties of hospitality with Pharnabazus, and had recently entered into the same relation with Agesilaus, proposed to him to bring about an interview between him and the satrap. The preliminaries were arranged, and a place of meeting appointed in the open air, to which Agesilaus came accompanied by the Thirty, and they seated themselves on the grass to wait for Pharnabazus. He came attended by a train of servants, who, according to the Persian fashion, proceeded to lay down a carpet and cushions for their master. But the intelligent Persian, struck by the contrast of the Spartan simplicity, in a fortune at present so much more prosperous than his own, ordered these instruments of luxury to be removed, and, in his splendid attire, took his seat without ceremony on the green-sward by the side of Agesilaus.
[395-394 B.C.]
After the forms of a friendly greeting had been interchanged, Pharnabazus opened the conference with an expostulation on the hard treatment which he had suffered. He reminded his hearers of the zeal and constancy with which he had espoused the cause of Sparta in the war with Athens. Nevertheless Spartan hostility had now reduced him to such a condition that even in his own territory he did not know how to find a meal, except such as he could collect, like a dog, from the orts and leavings of their rapine; while his fair patrimonial mansions, his pleasant woods and parks, had been all burned, and felled, and spoiled. If, he concluded, it was his ignorance that made him unable to reconcile such conduct with the obligations of justice and gratitude, he desired that the Spartans would enlighten him.
This address, Xenophon says, struck the Thirty with shame, and it was some time before Agesilaus broke the silence that ensued. Private friendship, he said, must give way to reasons of state. The Spartans, being at war with the king of Persia, were compelled to treat all his subjects as their enemies; and Pharnabazus among the rest, however glad they might be to gain him for their friend. And what they had now to propose was not that he should exchange one master for another, but that he should at once become their ally, and independent of every superior. Nor was it a poor or barren independence that they held out to him, but a rich addition to his hereditary possessions, which their aid would enable him to make at the expense of his fellow subjects, who would then be forced to own him as their master. Pharnabazus, in answer to these overtures, said that he would frankly declare his mind to them. If the king should attempt to place any other general in authority over him, he would renounce his allegiance, and ally himself to Sparta; but if his master entrusted him with the supreme command in that part of his domains, he would do his best to defend them. Agesilaus grasped his hand, and assured him of his warmest regard, and, under the excitement of a generous feeling, forgetting the excuse he had just before made for his past conduct, promised to withdraw immediately from his territories, and, though they should continue at war, to abstain from invading them, as long as there was any other quarter in which he could employ his forces. So the interview ended.
Agesilaus kept his word, and withdrew his forces from the satrapy of Pharnabazus, where indeed it is probable he would not otherwise have stayed much longer, as the spring was coming on, and he was meditating a new expedition, in which he meant to advance as far as he could into the interior. By this movement, if he gained no more decisive advantage, he expected that he should at least separate all the provinces which he left behind him from the Persian empire. With this design he proceeded to the plain of Thebe, where he encamped, and began to collect all the forces he could raise from the allied cities. He was in the midst of these preparations, when he received a message from the ephors, which was brought by a Spartan named Epicydidas, who apprised him of the new turn which affairs had taken in Greece, and summoned him to march with the utmost speed for the defence of his country. Agesilaus received this intelligence with fortitude, though it stopped him at the outset of the most brilliant career that had ever yet been opened by a Greek, and obeyed the command of the ephors with as much promptness as if he had been present in their council-room at Sparta.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[7] [Elea is used here to denote the district of which the city of Elis was the capital.]
[8] [It was commonly believed that Alcibiades was the father of Leotychides.]